Why can't these strings be formatted as numbers in Google Sheets?

Question

In this sheet, the numbers are actually text.

I tried Format->Number then Number, Percent and Scientific, and they still appear as text.

As experiments: I cannot add 1 to these, and I cannot pass them to the value() function. They do not have an apostrophe at the beginning, which would make them text.

How can I format these numbers as numbers?

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Edit:

I deleted the link to the sheet, because the excess character (which I identified as the cause) mysteriously disappeared from the sheet as well as historical versions which in principle are immutable! See answer below.

Answer 1

Since the numbers in column A are aligned to the left, assuming that the default formatting is applied to those cells, your spreadsheet is using comma as decimal separator, not a dot.

Alternatives

1. Change the spreadsheet regional setting to one that use dot as decimal separator like United States or Mexico among others.

2. Use comma as decimal separator instead of dot.

Related

• How to convert all numbers regardless of decimal separator into valid number of current locale?
• Setting up decimal separator, thousand separator and date in Google Spreadsheets

Answer 2

There was a hidden HTML Entity &#8324 "Right to Left"!

To see it, use F12 Developer Tools (Right Click->Inspect won't work as Google Sheets takes over right-click).

In fact, this entity is so unusual that Google Sheets may make it disappear in circumstances that I don't quite understand. The sheet somehow fixed itself. The problem resolved itself even in the historical revisions that I couldn't have fixed by accident.